Elizabeth Bacon
acrylic/mixed media on canvas

Words are what define our culture.  They help us make sense of our world and give us a tangible purpose to follow.  The jumbled words of the globe portray the scattering of languages at Babel–of a people in a disconnect with their God.  ”So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth.” (Gen. 11:8).

by Drew Young

Hope never fails, however; if you look for it, you can see the ever-present light.

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Have a great day!
Nicole Smith

“What constitutes a missionary call? It is a good sign that men ask this question. First, because it suggests that they think of the missionary enterprise as singularly related to the will of God. Second, because it indicates that they believe their lives are owned by a Person who has a right to direct them and whose call they must await.

But when we have said these two things, I think we have said everything that can be said in favor of the question because, far too often, it is asked for thoroughly un-Christian reasons.

For instance, Christians will pursue a profession here in the United States having demanded far less positive assurance that this is God’s will than it is for them to go out into the mission field. But by what right do they make such distinctions? Christianity contends that the whole of life and all services are to be consecrated; no man should dare to do anything but the will of God. And before he adopts a course of action, a man should know nothing less nor more than that it is God’s will for him to pursue it.

If men are going to draw lines of division between different kinds of service, what preposterous reasoning leads them to think that it requires less divine sanction for a man to spend his life easily among Christians than it requires for him to go out as a missionary to the heathen? If men are to have special calls for anything, they ought to have special calls to go about their own business, to have a nice time all their lives, to choose the soft places, to make money, and to gratify their own ambitions.

How can any honest Christian say he must have a special call not to do that sort of thing? How can he say that, unless he gets some specific call of God to preach the Gospel to the heathen, he has a perfect right to spend his life lining his pockets with money? Is it not absurd to suggest that a special call is necessary to become a missionary, but no call is required to gratify his own will or personal ambitions?

There is a general obligation resting upon Christians to see that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached to the world. You and I need no special call to apply that general call of God to our lives. We do need a special call to exempt us from its application to our lives. In other words, every one of us stands under a presumptive obligation to give his life to the world unless we have some special exemption.

This whole business of asking for special calls to missionary work does violence to the Bible. There is the command, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” We say, “That means other people.” There is the promise, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” We say, “That means me.” We must have a special divine indication that we fall under the command; we do not ask any special divine indication that we fall under the blessing. By what right do we draw this line of distinction between the obligations of Christianity and its privileges? By what right to we accept the privileges as applying to every Christian and relegate its obligations to the conscience of the few?

It does violence to the ordinary canons of common sense and honest judgment. We do not think of ordering other areas of our lives on this basis. I think ex-president Patton of Princeton was representing the situation accurately when he used the following illustration. He said, “Imagine I was employed by the owner of a vineyard to gather grapes in his vineyard. The general instructions were that as many grapes as possible should be gathered. I went down to the gate of the vineyard and found the area around the walls well plucked and the ground covered with pickers. Yet away off in the distance no pickers at all are in sight and the vines are loaded to the ground. Would I need a special visit and order from the owner of the vineyard to instruct me as to my duty?”

If I were standing by the bank of a stream, and some
little children were drowning, I would not need any officer of the law to come along and serve on me some legal paper commanding me under such and such a penalty to rescue those children. I should despise myself if I should stand there with the possibility of saving those little lives, waiting until, by some legal proceeding, I was personally designated to rescue them!

Why do we apply, in a matter of infinitely more consequence, principles that we would loathe and abhor if anybody should suggest that we should apply them in the practical affairs of our daily life? Listen for a moment to the wail of the hungry world. Feel for one hour its sufferings. Sympathize for one moment with its woes. And then regard it just as you would regard human want in your neighbor, or the want that you meet as you pass down the street, or anywhere in life.

There is something wonderfully misleading, full of hallucination and delusion in this business of missionary calls. With many of us it is not a missionary call at all that we are looking for; it is a shove. There are a great many of us who would never hear a call if it came. Somebody must come and coerce us before we will go into missionary work.

Every one of us rests under a sort of general obligation to give life and time and possession to the evangelization of the souls everywhere that have never heard of Jesus Christ. And we are bound to go, unless we can offer some sure ground of exemption which we could with a clear conscience present to Jesus Christ and be sure of His approval upon it.
“Well,” you ask, “do you mean, then, that I should take my life in my own hands?” No! That is precisely what I am protesting against! That is exactly what we have done. We have taken our lives in our own hands and proposed to go our own way unless God compels us to go some other way. What I ask is that, until God reveals to us some special, individual path on either side, we should give our lives over into Jesus’ hands to go in that path which He has clearly marked out before His church.

I want to say one last thing.

I think love will hear calls where the loveless heart will not know that they are sounding. If there were a hundred little children crying, a mother would be able to pick out the voices of her own – especially if they were voices of pain and suffering.

There is a mighty keenness in the ears of love, and I wonder, after all, whether that may not explain a great deal that one is perplexed over in this matter of a special missionary call. Is it possible that, in many cases, it is just a matter of a callused heart, a reluctant will, or a sealed mind?

God so loved the world that He gave. It was need in the world plus love in God that constituted a call for Jesus. Do we need more than what sufficed for Him? If they were our own, would we hesitate and hold back?

Let us lay aside all double-dealing, all moral subterfuge, all those shuffling evasions by which the Devil is attempting to persuade us to escape from our duty, and let us get up like men and look at it and do it.

Students are old enough to decide to do their duty. They are old enough to decide to go to college. They are old enough to decide for law and medicine and other professions. They are old enough, too, to decide this question. God forbid that we should try to hide from solemn consideration of our vital duty behind any kind of pretext.”

Alicia Alexander
acrylic on canvas

Our second week on talking about Noah, we revealed a new focus, that should have been obvious–God.  The first week, we saw God using water for destruction, as a justice to a sinful world.  Now we see water as cleansing, as hopeful, as a means for reflecting His great bow in the sky.  It was not only for us he sent the rainbow, but for Himself, to remind Himself of His promise to never again flood the world as He did so long ago.  Not for us did He even make the promise.  He knew we would remiss back into a world of sin not five minutes after His preserved creations stepped back onto dry land.  Not for Noah did He command him to build the ark.  He was certainly not perfect, or savior, or almighty . . . but simply one of God’s instruments.  When waves come crashing, remember God has promised–He will not destroy those who are His.  The dove leads us out into dry land; into hope, redemption, and the most beautiful, ridiculous, undeserved, complete, unconditional love there is.

by Drew Young

Monica Longoria
acrylic on canvas

The classic story of Noah: world gets violent, God gets angry, God has compassion, Noah builds ark, God floods earth, flood washes away, Noah and crew live it up on dry land.  Its interesting the role that water plays in this story, as that of the antagonist in a sense.  We want water to be peaceful, calm, refreshing, life-giving; and here God goes and uses it to destroy (almost) all life on earth.  Our righteous selves can see this as injust–what is a loving God doing destroying His creation?  But what else would we have Him do?  Our God is not unjust, and does not tolerate sin.  His judgments and actions are right, and He has right to anything in His creation.  The ark serves as a symbol of hope and mercy in the midst of the waters, showing both the justice and love of our God working side-by-side.

by Stephanie Guckenberger

We’re all born into this world that is broken. We all find ourselves, at some point, broken. But God’s in the business of making things new. Taking our sin and shame, He uses our past for good in the present and future. Through our trials, pain, and lessons stories get created. With these stories, we get to help other people, relate to other people, and share with other people. These new beginnings aren’t just for ourselves, but others too. When we are made new, others get to be influenced by that too, and a new story starts to be written. That’s some good stuff.

Look out for the podcast coming up with the stories shared tonight. It will posted on this blog in the near future.

-Nicole

by Drew Young

The tale of Cain and Abel is one we’ve all probably heard . . . but have we really?  They lived on this earth.  Walked the same broken ground that we walk; had the same desires, the same fears, the same envy, the same hate.  While the sun is coming up over God’s good world, sin looms in the valley, but it cannot be hidden.  God always knows, and His punishment will be just.  Christ, however, has made our intercession; the ground soaking up His blood as it soaked up Abel’s so long ago.  For all of our moments of Cain-like rage and pseudo-power.  Go against Cain’s lack of shame and repent, with humility and praise for the God who gives.   Take Christ’s freedom and run.

by Mikaela Woodbury
acrylic on canvas

When the sin entraps, we become focused–not on our needs, but our desires.  The darkness of sin makes chaos of what we’ve made ordered, stealing Light; it is lost.  We’ve made our world like this.  Our sin creates this darkness.  We can’t help but look back.The work was inspired by the idea of our sin and what it takes to escape from it’s oppression-  conviction, repentance, and a complete scouring with grace to be free of the penetrating soot that clings to us. The man is no one in particular, a distraught soul experiencing longing, and the distortion in his face takes away from the overall aesthetic like sin distorts and steals joy. But the loose line work and highlighting were meant to show that there is still beauty to be drawn out. The image is not all black, and there is hope.

But . . . (a key word) we have been offered hope.  Redemption.  Joy.   None of it deserving, but free nonetheless.  No matter how deep our sin takes us, the cross of Christ stands firm to take our beating.  With it, we are free.  Look forward to the light of today, tomorrow, eternity.

*first painting by Katy Ward, charcoal, colored pencil, and acrylic on canvas; “This Cloud of Sin”

*second painting by Emily-Erin Robinson, multimedia on canvas

Marriage.  Sexuality.  Singleness.  How do these merge?  How do we make sense of it?  How do we live it as Christians in a fallen world?  It may be chaos, but it is also beautiful.  The body working as God intended sings His praises, and the joy of creation reigns.  Going all the way back to Adam and Eve, we ask the question: what is wrong with sexuality today?  It’s distorted.  Let’s see it for what it really is.

*painting by Emily Echevvaria, multimedia on canvas

I just wanted one little taste
Maybe it was the logic of the beast that led to my haste
As I stared at the fruit it just looked so good
Like wanting it so badly was something I should
In the few small moments where I made that choice
I could here faintly behind me my creator’s voice
You are not to eat of this one single tree
Why I thought, what is he keeping from me?
My decision was driven by simple curiosity
But the fruit left my lips, my eyes opened and I could see
Immediately I felt guilty, naked, dirty.
I had been deceived

I just wanted to see her happy
When she came to me asking
Will you eat this too
I knew exactly what I was told to do
But the guilt in her eyes I could hardly bear
Pain, self loathing, a hint of despair
This woman: flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone
I could not let her carry that on her own
I knew what it felt like being all alone
So I placed my love for her on Gods rightful throne
Honestly maybe I was curious myself a little bit
Why had he made a tree that he did not permit
It wasn’t eves fault, that much ill admit
And tht doesn’t make it right and I knew it
But in the end it was love that made me do it

And if I could take it back I would
If I could do it all over, I wish I wish I could
What I would give for another moment in his presence
I would give my own life for just a few seconds
But I can’t it’s too late
my guilt is too great
I sealed my fate
I’m stuck in this state
And there’s no way to make this path straight
I understand I get it I know my actions implication
And no it’s not just Eve’s brutal pain in childbirth
Or even my never ceasing Toil with the earth
It’s much bigger than that
It’s eternal forever total damnation condemnation separation
From the only source of life
Look me in the eyes
Do you see what I’ve done
I’m responsible for the lost ones
The ones who are dying trying to find their way to the son
Every time I close my eyes I struggle to stay sane
Because what flashes before them is the entire worlds hurt suffering and pain Nations at war bloodshed children slain
And all of that’s on my shoulders I’m the one to blame
No you see I get it I really do
That my actions affect not only me but all of you
I’m Sorry we screwed up we blew it
We sinned and all the while we knew it
We took that fruit and we bit it and we tasted it
We took Gods plan and we crushed it and we wasted it
We looked at God’s creation and we spit on it and made a disgrace of it
We were created in the perfect image of God
But now these leaves cover up our guilty fraud

So you can Call me Adam the first among us to sin
Adam and Eve the ones who ushered death in
But whatever you do don’t forget the fall don’t forget what we’ve done
If you’re looking for a way out of death you won’t find one
if you’re searching for life there is none
And it is in this darkness that we wait day after day for the rising of the sun

All because we just wanted one taste

*poem by Jake Davis, photo by Abigail Dorman